


Second Chances

by rhysiana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bookstore owner Alexei Mashkov, Fluff with Feels, Injury Recovery, M/M, Post-retirement Kent Parson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 16:12:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: Kent, like most hockey players, had thought a lot about retirement. But, if he were being honest, he’d always thought it would be one knee injury too many, a quiet exit from the life at the end of a season, ideally at the end of a hard-fought playoff series, and then he’d go off to a nice house in a more northern climate where the sun didn’t try to kill you all twelve months of the year.Well, he’d gotten the last one, at least.***In which Kent moves to a small town in upstate New York to start his retired life, and meets Alexei, who runs the local bookstore, who might be just what Kent needs to ease the transition.





	Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bigspicysenpai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigspicysenpai/gifts).



> I'm laughing because when I signed up to pinch hit for this exchange, I thought I wasn't really in a Patater mood, only to then immediately be struck by inspiration for the Patater prompt from the options I was given. The prompt asked for Kent retiring from the NHL to a small town in upstate New York, Tater as the owner of a local business Kent keeps being drawn back to, and lots of fluff without too much angst or smut. I hope I've delivered on all these things! It was a joy to get to write for the KPBB again, since its first year was the reason I posted my first fic on AO3.
> 
> Many thanks to omgericzimmermann and likeshipsonthesea for betaing!

Kent, like most hockey players who made it through the first couple of years, had thought a lot about retirement. He’d known it would come when he was still relatively young, by most people’s standards, and that it would more likely than not be due to injury. These were just facts he’d accepted, and he’d been fine with them, in concept, for years. But, if he were being honest, he’d always thought it would be one knee injury too many, a quiet exit from the life at the end of a season, ideally at the end of a hard-fought playoff series, and then he’d go off to a nice house in a more northern climate where the sun didn’t try to kill you all twelve months of the year.

Well, he’d gotten the last one, at least, along with all the home maintenance that implied.

The screwdriver he was holding fell out of his hand as it spasmed, landing (handle-down, small favors) on his foot. Cursing, he sat back against the doorframe and started massaging the hand gently, the way his PT had taught him during all those months of surgeries and rehab. This was the best they could do, they finally said. As good as it was ever going to get from their end. Now all he had was time, patience, and a set of exercises that were supposed to help, but not fast enough to be useful.

That, and the view from his new porch, he supposed. He sighed as the spasm eased. The pine-covered mountains were more soothing than he’d expected, after a decade in the desert. Why should upstate New York still feel more like home than Vegas ever had? He hadn’t even really lived here. Mysteries. But he didn’t really need to understand it to fully appreciate the feeling of sweat on his forehead cooling in a breeze that promised the first hints of autumn at the barest start of September.

His phone rang, and he actually bothered to answer because it was Jeff.

“How’s the leisure life treating you?” Jeff teased, and it was finally starting to sound less like a carefully manufactured cheer for Kent’s fragile benefit.

“It was going great until I discovered I can’t even change my own locks without dropping all the tools,” Kent replied, exhausted all over again. He wished he had something better to say. When was he going to be able to answer an innocent question from a friend with something _nice_?

“Kent,” Jeff said. “Buddy. Pal. You’re _rich_. Hire a fuckin’ locksmith. You should do that anyway. They can install the extended screws for the deadbolt so people can’t just kick the door in.” Kent had forgotten Jeff’s dad did construction. Jeff had distinct opinions about carpentry.

“Fine,” Kent sighed into the phone, and then put it on speaker so he could send Jeff a picture of the view.

“Best get your guest room set up for me, man. You know I’m gonna be there first chance I get.”

Kent quirked half a smile that Jeff couldn’t see. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re such a mooch.”

Someone shouted in the background, and Kent realized Jeff must be calling from the arena. From pre-season camp. Where Kent would never run drills again.

“Hey, Kent, I gotta…”

“Go, Swoops. It’s fine. Thanks for calling.”

“Yeah, of course. You, uh, you take care, okay? Call that locksmith.”

“I will,” Kent promised. “Now go.” He hung up for good measure.

A questioning meow came from beside his elbow and he looked down at Kit, toeing the line between the house and the forbidden porch. He scooped her into his lap and petted her until she started to squirm.

“Yeah, you’re right. Enough sitting. I should go into town, huh, princess?”

Kit offered no reply other than to hop over the pile of disassembled doorknob pieces and head back inside, which was answer enough for Kent. He swept the whole mess inside with his foot, grabbed his keys, and shut the door behind him as firmly as possible by sticking a finger through the hole where the knob used to be. At least he hadn’t removed the old deadbolt yet, which should at least keep Kit in while he was gone.

***

The town Kent had retired to was almost painfully quaint. He found the locksmith at a counter in the back of the hardware store, which was a family-run operation with a potted plant display out front that featured a Radio Flyer wagon filled with a fairy garden. He automatically repressed his instinct to coo, remembered he had no teammates to front for anymore with a jolt, and took a picture to send to Jeff. (“Bro, that’s sickeningly cute.” “I know, isn’t it great?!”)

Locksmith visit scheduled for the next day, he didn’t really have any reason not to go home (where his front door had a _hole in it_ ), but the idea of returning for yet another evening of TV with Kit and maybe some listless unpacking of one of the boxes he hadn’t known what to tell the movers to do with made him feel slightly unhinged, so he turned away from his car and continued down the sidewalk. What other quaint stores did the quaint main street in this quaint town have to offer? (Quaint as a word had now lost all meaning to him, he’d thought it so many times in the last ten minutes.)

First stop: coffee shop. He ordered the latte flavor that was listed as their daily special, took in the pleasant ambiance just long enough to decide he’d come back later, and stepped back onto the sidewalk, where he was stopped again almost immediately by a table of used books just outside the open door of a bookstore.

He picked up one with a cover that caught his eye, but with his coffee in his good hand, he found he didn’t have the dexterity to flip through it. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring blankly at the backmatter description when someone called from inside, “Is okay, you know? You can come in, bring your coffee, don't need stand outside to finish.”

Kent started and put the book back on the table. Existential crisis over his hand aside, he could still look around. “Thanks,” he said as he came in, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the dimmer interior lighting.

The shop was larger than Kent had initially thought, possibly fooled by the small size of the coffee shop next door, with generous spacing between the shelves and around the display tables. An area near the front windows looked like it had been turned into a discussion nook with couches and chairs and—Kent did a double take, but no, it really was—a samovar.

“Hello! Welcome,” the voice said again, and this time Kent tracked it to a man sitting behind the checkout counter in the middle of the store, apparently positioned so he could see into every corner, as well as out the door. Especially, Kent noticed as he got close, given how tall he was. (And how broad-shouldered. Surely a physique like that did not stem from shelving books…) He was smiling cheerfully.

“Добрый день,” Kent responded without thinking, and the smile grew.

“You speak?” the man asked in delight.

“Uh… only a little. I used to, uh, work with a lot of Russian guys, so I learned, you know,” Kent made an inarticulate gesture, “the basics.”

“Good! You want learn more, you let me know, yes? I’m Alexei,” he said, and held out a hand to shake.

Kent reached to take it, winced, and tried to pull back all at once. Alexei caught his flailing hand in concern and stilled it with a gentle firmness Kent hadn’t felt since he left his physical therapist behind in Vegas.

“You are okay?”

Kent swallowed and blinked rapidly a few times, too many thoughts and feelings happening at once. “Yeah, I’m fine, thank you. I just…” He turned his palm slightly, revealing the scars up the wrist and across his hand. “I haven’t gotten used to it yet.”

Alexei regarded him seriously for a moment, then nodded, releasing his hand. “I understand,” he said, and reached under the counter for a cane. When he stood up from the high stool he’d been sitting on, Kent realized he was even taller than he’d thought. Scraps’ height, probably. “Come, we will have tea.”

“Uh, I have coffee?” Kent hadn’t really meant for that to be a question, but oh well.

“Fine. _I_ will have tea, you will have coffee. Is really invitation to talk anyway.”

Kent was startled into a laugh by Alexei’s clear tone of mild exasperation. “I’m Kent, by the way. I think I forgot to say that earlier.”

Kent wondered if he imagined Alexei’s slight pause at that, but he just nodded as he rested his cane against the table next to the samovar and started making tea. “Is good to meet you, Kent.” He turned with a smile and a broad gesture at the seating area. “Now sit.”

And that was how Kent ended up spending the rest of the afternoon in Alexei’s bookstore. The conversation Kent was most dreading passed so quickly it barely registered.

“Tell me, what do you like to read?”

“Kind of everything? I spent a lot of time on planes for work. I’ve gotten used to reading whatever I can get my hands on.” Kent winced at his own phrasing and barreled through the rest of it. “But now I’m not sure that I can. If I can hold them that long.”

Alexei waved a dismissive hand. “I have book stands. Audiobooks. Does not matter _how_ you read book, just that you like book. Is okay, I will figure out what you like.” He grinned and winked. “Is my specialty.”

And then he was off, grilling Kent about his opinions on every bestseller for the last decade, which classics he’d read and whether he’d liked any of them, his hobbies…

“Oh my god, you have cat! I must see!”

When Kent left, he had a copy of Alexei’s favorite coffee table book of astrophotography, a new speaker dock for his phone, and instructions on how to download the first three The Cat Who… mysteries on audio from the local library because “they are classics, but old, nobody wants buy them anymore, so I not carry them, this is why we have library, yes? You come to next mystery book club on Friday and meet head librarian, she is best!”

Kit jumped down from her cat tree to greet him when he finally got home. “Hey, baby,” he said, wonderingly, “I think I made a friend.” Kit purred as she rubbed against his shin. He took it as a sign of approval.

***

Alexei, it seemed, ran events at his bookstore all the time. If he didn’t have something scheduled at least once a week, he took it as a personal failing.

“I can ask Mrs. Kremer to come talk about her vacation in Europe?” he suggested when Kent stopped in to browse the new releases.

Kent raised his eyebrows. “I thought you wanted your customers to come back.”

“Ha ha, very funny. I have blank spot on calendar, Kent! Is very dire.”

Kent grinned at the reminder of how very broad Alexei’s vocabulary was, even if he never cared much about the finer points of English grammar when speaking. “Get your astronomy professor friend to come in and do a talk about what to expect from the autumn skies. He can do a talk every season.”

Alexei brightened again. “Oh! Good idea.”

Kent took a book on unsolvable mathematics problems to the register and tried not to think about why it made him feel so good to see Alexei smiling again.

“Oh, nice choice. I found new Sudoku book for you, too,” Alexei said, turning on his stool to the cubbies where he kept all the special orders. “Has rainbow colors in addition to rows and columns. Looks fun!”

Kent grinned helplessly back at him and tried extra hard not to think about why someone getting him a dumb Sudoku book, of all things, would make his chest feel tight.

***

Kent had been doing remarkably well, really, since he’d moved here. He had his new house with its great view and Kit’s dream catio enclosure on the back porch, and he had a new friend, and he still had his old friends (mostly), and he had an ever increasing to-be-read pile of both paper and audiobooks. He should have known it was too good to last. All he’d done for the past three days was move from his bed to the couch and then back to the bed, and that was mostly just to give himself a little variety in the ceiling texture he was staring at.

He’d just moved back to the living room (flat, with a slight wave in one corner where the drywall tape hadn’t been laid well under the paint; Jeff would not approve) when there was a knock at the door. Kent couldn’t imagine who it would be, but he sighed and got up to answer it anyway.

It was Alexei. Kent stood and blinked at him stupidly for entirely too long.

“Kent!” Alexei exclaimed with evident relief, and then enveloped Kent in a hug, which, from someone Alexei’s size, was a full-body experience. “You miss astronomy lecture! I am very worried.”

“Sorry,” Kent mumbled into Alexei’s chest. Then he frowned in confusion. “How did you even find me?”

Alexei pulled back a little, but didn’t let go of Kent’s shoulders. “I ask Tim at hardware store. He tell me. Is okay? Is supposed to be secret?”

It was, and it wasn’t, but Kent didn’t feel like getting into it. He’d been enjoying his relative anonymity here, and he didn’t want to spoil it. _Especially_ with Alexei. He didn’t want to have to be Parse with him. Just Kent. Whoever Kent was now.

“No,” he managed eventually. “It’s fine. I just wondered, is all.” He stepped back and gestured vaguely toward the living room. “Um, do you want to come in?”

“Thank you,” Alexei said, oddly formal, and made his way slowly toward the couch.

Kent frowned as he watched and wondered if the coffee table was too close for comfortable maneuverability. “Are _you_ okay? Is your leg… worse today?”

Alexei waved his hand, one of his favorite gestures. “Is nothing, just getting colder. You know, weather changes.”

Kent flexed his hand in unconscious sympathy. “Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?” He paused, trying to remember what was in his fridge. “Uh, juice, probably?”

Alexei grinned and reached into his jacket pocket. “A good idea! Look, I bring you proper tea. I’m sure you don’t have.”

Kent accepted the tin with a laugh. “Well, you were definitely right about that. Let me go, um, figure out how to make some. I’ll be right back.”

“Is easy!” Alexei called after him. “I bring you kind in bags! For cheaters!”

Kent actually found himself smiling as he heated the water and got the tea steeping. It was the first time in days he hadn’t felt just… numb.

When he came back, carrying a tray very carefully, he found Kit curled in Alexei’s lap purring very loudly, and Alexei looking utterly delighted.

“She likes me!”

“Everybody likes you, Alexei,” Kent replied, and then got to watch the enormous man actually blush.

“So,” Alexei said, clearly changing the subject as he reached for his tea, “is October.”

Kent buried his face in the steam of his own mug and stared very intently at the couch. “Yup.”

“I can watch Aces opener with you, or you want to be alone?” Alexei asked bluntly.

Kent startled so hard tea slopped over the rim onto his hand. “Ow, shit!” He hastily put the mug back on the tray and stuck a finger in his mouth.

Alexei looked contrite. “Sorry. Seemed better to, you know.” He mimed ripping a Band-Aid off.

“How long have you known?”

Alexei reached over and tugged Kent’s hand from his mouth to examine his fingers. He blew on them gently. “Hmmm, looks not too bad. Think you can keep them.”

“Alexei.”

“I used to have nickname, you know,” Alexei said, studiously casual. “Tater.”

Why did that sound familiar? “Alexei… Mashkov. You were supposed to play for the Falconers.”

“ _Did_ play for Falconers. For half of season. Even played against _you_ ,” Alexei said, and then gestured toward his leg. “Until.”

Kent vaguely recalled hearing about it, a terrible on-ice collision that had sent the Falconers’ promising new D-man out for the rest of the season, but they weren’t even in the same conference, so he’d only given it the same amount of thought he had any other team’s injury reports at the time. To be quite honest, he hadn’t paid the Falconers any particular attention at all until Jack signed with them.

“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you,” Kent offered feebly.

Alexei, of course, waved the comment away. “Not point. Point _is_ , I’m knowing it’s hard to get through first season without team.”

Kent scoffed. “I got ten years in the NHL. Ten years with the same team, even. I have nothing to complain about. It was more than I could have hoped for, really. This is just the next stage, the next phase. I’m fine.” His voice broke unconvincingly at the end and he swallowed. “I should be fine.”

“Bullshit,” Alexei said firmly, and held up two hands. He raised one slightly. “Retirement because tired and finished.” He raised the other. “Retirement because injured and broken.” He balanced them against each other. “Totally different things. I know. Sure, you lucky. You have great career. But still did not end on your terms.” The fluency of that last statement made it sound like something Alexei had heard a lot. Kent knew a therapist’s voice when he heard one.

Kent nodded.

Alexei cocked his head to the side consideringly, and Kent wondered what question was about to hit him next. “Why you move here? You said, you play for same team ten years. You don’t want stay there?”

Kent blew out the breath he’d accidentally been holding. This he could answer. Alexei would even understand. “You know what a fluke that was, how rare. I played for the Aces the whole time, but I was always, _always_ waiting to be traded. I could never afford to let it feel like home, never get too comfortable with the team, because even if I didn’t go, they would.” It was life in the NHL, they all knew that, but if there was one thing he wouldn’t miss, it was that. “Besides,” he added, lighter, “it was too hot there.”

Alexei wasn’t fooled. “And you do not want reminders.”

“Yeah.” Kent was tired of being the center of attention in this little talk. “What about you? You didn’t want to go back to Russia?”

Alexei gave Kent a long look over the rim of his mug. “No, Kent,” he enunciated very carefully, “I did not want to go back to Russia. Because I realize, during many hours of recovery to think, that if I cannot have hockey, I can have other parts of me.” He held Kent’s eyes intently. “You understand?”

“Oh,” Kent said faintly, and then cleared his throat. Because that was definitely a thought he’d had as well; a thought he’d been ignoring fiercely for months now. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I understand.”

Alexei nodded. “Thought so.” He settled more comfortably into the couch, hooked his cane on the other side of the arm, stretched his bad leg out in front of him. “So, we going to watch game or no? I hear Aces lose their captain, they going to suck this year.”

Kent snatched up the TV remote with a mock outraged gasp. “Rude!” He cued up the right channel, still on the pointless pre-game analysis, and pulled out his phone. “I'm going to tell Jeff you said that.”

“Mmmm,” Alexei hummed from his end of the couch. “Falconers will be better this year.”

“Oh, we’ll see about that, buddy. I helped Jeff figure out their new lines this season, you know. They’re gonna be _awesome_.”

Alexei just grinned and made a rude gesture Kent knew from Scraps. Kent threw a pillow at him.

***

By the end of the night, the pillow was propped against Alexei’s thigh, Kent was lying on it, and Alexei’s fingers were carding slowly through his hair. The game went into overtime, the Aces did indeed suck, and Kent thought maybe retirement wasn’t so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> -Добрый день (Dobryy den') - Good day. I chose this over "privet" because it's not quite the blandest Russian phrase Kent could have learned, but still very Russian 1. Kent's not fluent, just polite.  
> -Also, now that authors have been revealed, a bonus picture of the wagon fairy garden, because it was based on a real-life thing:  
> 


End file.
